The weather down Canterbury way has been at best erratic this December. Blazing heat (into which I can't go out, faute de excessive rhume de foins) and all sorts of showers. Just when we'd mowed and baled our biggest ever crop of hay. A farmer's life is not a peaceful one.
Anyway, today has turned out 'improving', as the camp little man on NZTV news says, and this afternoon, at 4pm I dared venture out with an empty wheelbarrow and the trusty Canon. I emptied the wheelbarrow, half filled it again -- whoever said 'big weeds are as easy to pull as little ones' has never been here! --- and then turned to the Canon.
I seem to take the same pictures every year, but no. Facebook showed me my house 15, 10, 2 years ago .. trees are gone ... and then there's Wendy's veggie garden. A source of infinite joy (to me) and delicious Real Homegrown Produce.
Well, I'd taken Canon out, really, to photograph a minor miracle. Some years ago, someone (hands up, please!) gave us a couple of walnut tree sproutlets. I planted them, without much hope, and one promptly died. But the other bullied its way on and up. He is now ?15 feet tall and finally, this week, he has proved that he is a nutter!
I've got nuts! A little effortfully small, but nuts! I don't imagine we'll be gorging ourselves on home-grown walnuts just yet a while but ... hey, NUTS! (Ps the next tree is a chestnut which annually fruits and seeds, but what does one do with a chestnut?)
Walking back from the 'orchard' to the house, I thought -- it's taken 20 plus years, but I have at last got the little dells and glades I always dreamed of.
Round to the back of the house ... we had the most fantastic potatoes from the garden for Christmas dinner ...
Taste? I'd forgotten that REAL spuds tasted like that. (Credit: Scotty's Seedlings, Ohoka). I'm a spudophile so this is a wheeee! for me.
There are still two garden-boxes of them left so wheee! all over again!
I'm not a gardenwise chappie, so I don't know what's supposed to bloom/fruit when; but I took Canon round the garden and found .. oh yay! beautiful broad beans
I didn't dare touch the incipient cucumbers, but .. courgettes!
The breeder told me I'd have to wait till mid-January for tomatoes but .. they're starting! Baby beef toms!
There's celery and spinach and umpteen herbs ... and the most precocious crop of all --- the vigorous strawberry. Once again, 100% more taste than the supermarket offerings ...
Ah well, I leave my garden, and can never resist taking photos from the exterior ..
I do love my garden ...
PS Oh! There's a cucumber. A bit more than incipient ....
And that's beetroot under the netting ..
And that's the green bay tree flourishing in the background ...
A few days later ...
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| The Basil seeds have germinated! |
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| This morning's harvest |
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| First fruit from the courgette plant |
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| This courgette had ambitions to be a courge! |
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| The bluberry bush hasn't bushed much, but the berries are there! |
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